food52's Best Cucumber Recipe and Best Use of Lemon, Thyme, and a Grill

The website food52 asks home cooks to submit their best recipes to weekly contests that determine which will make it into a forthcoming cookbook. Each week we feature the contests’ finalists. Check out the recipes, go vote, and connect our passionate food community with theirs.

This week’s contenders for food52′s Best Cucumber Recipe and Best Use of Lemon, Thyme, and a Grill. Photographs by Sarah Shatz.

Once again, we’re sharing the best home cook-submitted recipes from food52′s latest contests. This week, the themes were “Best Cucumber Recipe” and “Best Use of Lemon, Thyme, and a Grill.”

Who have New York Times food writers Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs chosen as their food52 finalists this time around? Find out after the jump, then go vote to help pick the winners.

What Hesser and Stubbs Say: Shiso and pickles should hang out more often. The aromatic green leaves give Teri’s lightly sweet pickles a fresh, herbaceous lift, reminiscent of cinnamon, cloves and ginger all at once.

What Hesser and Stubbs Say: The success of this recipe lies in the details: salting the cucumber and onion slices to keep them from getting soggy and soften the sting of the onion, augmenting the sweet tang of the yogurt with a dash of vinegar and a bit of sugar, and adding Meyer lemon zest and fresh dill to achieve subtle layers of perfume.

What Hesser and Stubbs Say: Grilled bread is so much better than toasted, and the heady perfume of the thyme pesto seduces you before you can even get the toast to your mouth. The preserved lemon cream softens any rough edges and adds richness.